“So that’s it,” Kelly said, the pieces clicking into a perfect, ugly picture as Ren finished laying it out. “Thanks for the history lesson. Earth’s a dump. A toxic, radioactive, mutagenic dump. And it’s the most valuable piece of real estate in the system because of it.”

  Thanks to the secrets of Earth’s pollution and toxic hot zones Ren had explained, she finally understood why Earth sat at the center of humanity’s markets. She leaned back, ticking the reasons off on her fingers. The poison zones were used for research—giant free labs. The pre- and post-war junk scattered around went right alongside them as resources. Deadtech. Lost tech. Blueprints pulled out of places that were actively trying to kill you.

  “The AIs won’t trade,” she went on. “They’ve got all the advantages.” Humanity leaned on the one thing it had left: Earth itself. A treasure trove to stay ahead of its cold-war enemies, or at least keep from falling so far behind you became someone else’s blueprint.

  America was still standing because the country already existed in a state of pure corruption. The states themselves had fallen centuries ago.

  Han Cybernetics controlled the Asian markets, with sizeable connections and influence stretching across planetary systems. The UK, the Chinese government, and the Eastern Coalition were stuck dealing with contested regions run by local augmented warlords—people who saw the current madness as opportunity and carved out mini empires faster than it took to build a coffee shop. China had the highest population and concentration of peak-tier augmented tanks in the world, and everyone else had to plan around that.

  In short, the markets were a mess. With the world sliding into a magical apocalypse, it was the perfect moment for someone to shake the board, assuming one of the Big Four didn’t do it first. Kelly’s money stayed on the guy who could fly you out of orbit without a shuttle and hurl you into the nearest star wearing nothing but a T-shirt and some slacks.

  They talked some more.

  Turns out there were already rumors about a power source inside the terraforming cube, something capable of powering all kinds of magical devices. Ren didn’t know what it was or how it worked, only that his information network had picked up the rumors and that they were circulating in the right places.

  Kelly already knew.

  It was the giant crystal inside the terraforming cube, the one covered in dense, tiny runes packed so tightly they blurred together if you didn’t focus. Maybe the crystal. Maybe the cube itself. She’d seen it before, but only broken and dormant. Even then, she’d suspected it was some kind of power source. That was the only explanation that made sense. Shutting the cube down and then taking control of its tech would change humanity permanently. The magic theory alone would advance them by centuries. The plan was simple in the way only terrible plans ever were: whichever faction controlled it would unlock the knowledge, figure out how to recreate the magical power source, and use it to build magical augments. Human military forces would finally get the edge they needed to claim real dominance across the galaxy.

  Ren said he knew Vaughn well. Once humanity finished dominating the Tüin and the rogue AIs, once both were completely at humanity’s mercy, they would use the machines and whatever they created from the cube’s tech to break the dimensional boundary and open a permanent passage to the other side. An invasion. Humanity’s invasion. Taking over the magical dimension that had made the mistake of opening passages to Earth in the first place.

  That was why Project Portal was too important to stop. That was why it kept going through the collapse. That was why they were letting magical extradimensional creatures rampage across the world, killing whoever was unlucky enough to run into them.

  It sounded bad. Even to Kelly. And her upbringing had been loose on ethics at best. Ren said that since the last war, and after twenty years of false peace with two major enemies—ignoring the smaller ones—humanity had been preparing nonstop for the next big one. Military academies gained prestige and multiplied. Global and interplanetary skirmishes fueled economies and produced hardened, experienced soldiers for the major powers.

  Every few years, the major academies organized crusades. Expeditions into dangerous planets, enemy strongholds, overreaches nobody officially acknowledged. Explorers, peak tanks, promising elites, entire regiments of recruits sent in to get real combat experience. Raids into hostile territory. Survive, learn, come back different—or don’t come back.

  Since the last real global war more than twenty years ago, military tech and research had grown exponentially. Facing two technologically superior enemies forced humanity to move fast, and it did. Ren thought civilian casualties would be high. Lower than before, but high. He thought humans would definitely win.

  Kelly thought about the god of order. About the way the bastard had talked, like there were plenty more gods waiting in line. She didn’t share Ren’s confidence.

  After at least half an hour, the old monster finally stopped.

  “I don’t know if your time looping comes from stealing power from the being above Times Square,” Ren said slowly, “or if it’s a mutation, or if it’s the result of your own work and a very unfortunate chain of events, like you claim. But from what you’ve told me, nobody else knows about it.” He paused. “That makes it an invaluable advantage. An incredible mutation.”

  “I haven’t had a student in nearly three hundred years,” he went on. “And for someone whose talent exceeds even the most monstrous soldiers I’ve heard of, I’d be careless to let that pass. Foolish, even.”

  Ren glanced toward the reopened gallery shutters, then back to Kelly. His attention zeroed in, as if he were sliding a window shut.

  “My time is limited,” he said. “Multiple operations are running. I can push my schedule back by a few hours today. Nothing beyond that.”

  He shifted his weight against the flooring, one arm folding across his chest.

  “There is only so much I can teach you before you stop being a student and start being a resource in future loops. I’ll do what I can.”

  His gaze stayed on her when he continued.

  “After that, you should attend a military academy. With your abilities, you should steal every datachip you can get your hands on. I’ll give you a recommendation.”

  He paused, just long enough for the implication to settle.

  “If you’re caught, you’ll be executed. If you don’t get greedy, get lucky, and if anything I teach actually sticks in that hard head of yours, you won’t.”

  Kelly found herself agreeing. People loved talking about how prestigious and brutal the academies were. How life-changing they were in a world surrounded by war, superior enemies, and ancient monsters. How rare, valuable, essential and well-guarded their datachips were.

  The academies themselves were stuck-up nightmares. Full of over-specced’ well-fed, silver-spoon loving mouth-breathers who thought every problem was solved with a two guns and a whole lot of shouting.

  Their datachips, though?

  Priceless.

  “That being said, we will start your training now,” the old veteran remarked.

  Kelly felt a strange sensation in her chest. Was this… love? For battle, obviously. Not for that old bag of bones and metal.

  “This will be better than training sheltered academy recruits,” Ren said. “Given how you discovered your abilities in life-threatening and pressurized circumstances, this will be the best way to bring out your potential. I will try to avoid killing you. It shouldn’t be too hard. Develop new abilities. Try not to die.”

  Kelly stopped time-skipping the coin above her palm. She barely felt the steady, subtle drain on her mind, body, and soul. Something as small as a credit was a trickle. It was easily manageable.

  Ren watched the coin freeze and stutter in the air. “The way you’re altering the time of that object,” he said, his voice low and assessing. “Can you do that to me?”

  The old war veteran, Ren Sato the Ghost, raised his hand. His fingers and wrist reconfigured, small segments sliding and locking with a series of unheard clicks. His hand transformed into a long, single-edged dagger made of the same matte grey alloy as his armor. He took a stance. His feet finally shifted, settling into something grounded and inevitable.

  Kelly looked from the dagger to his expression. She knew she was in for a world of pain. A grim emotion settled on her face. It wasn’t joy. It was recognition.

  Finally, something practical.

  To Kelly, learning had once involved lectures, tuition fees, peer-reviewed papers, and specialized equipment in a clean, singular field of expertise. The old veteran Sato the Ghost’s form of education was nothing like that. His grading scale was various promises to break her bones if her answers were slow. His academy was a dagger-hand aimed at her throat and a command to alter time before it landed.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Needless to say, it was not a formal lesson.

  The man was a monster. A complete, unrepentant, educational monster.

  Kelly took a breath. It felt like inhaling a bag of angry glass. Okay, two ribs—maybe three. Her shoulder had recently vacated its socket for a brief, dramatic excursion before she’d convinced it to return. A souvenir gash over her eyebrow donated a steady crimson drip into her eye. Her ankle had developed a profound philosophical disagreement with the concept of ‘standing.’ Her Fortress of Vitality title was humming like an overworked fridge, a persistent, warm tingle deep in her bones as it desperately tried to paste her back together. It was less like healing and more like internal frantic paperwork.

  He pushed her to her limits. Which was fine. Expected, even. It forced her to think of new ways to push her capabilities, which was the whole irritating, excellent point.

  But she noted the calibrated precision. The strike that could have removed her head instead gave her a thrilling new hairstyle via the wall. The throw that could have shattered her spine left her in a crumpled but catalogable heap. He never went beyond a level she couldn't handle. She knew he could. That wasn't his goal. She quickly ascertained the old ghost was just applying pressure. The kind of pressure that might, if she was clever and desperate enough, make her Titles, Traits, and abilities cough up something new.

  And when he discovered Kelly could sense time and had implants that allowed her to see him while blinded, he adjusted his methods. Through her passive mana sensing trait—through which all humans just looked like easily identifiable voids of mana-rejecting nothingness in a vibrant mana-filled world, though he didn’t know that—he forced her to fight him with her senses removed. No touch. No sight. No hearing. Or even taste.

  Her world shrank to raw mana and time—a vague, directional pressure of causality, and the stark, human-shaped emptiness moving through the energy field. She swung at voids. She stumbled. She dodged disturbances in the atmospheric energy.

  It was hell.

  But it provided Kelly with interesting new variables. And knowledge—knowledge on her new abilities started to compile in the dark.

  The first was her time sense. She learned how a person’s presence affected the temporal stream of everything they interacted with. Every particle of air, surface they touched, and action they took created specific, branching alterations in what happened next. She learned to sense those alterations. Then she studied them as she fought.

  Studying the immediate, local cascade of adjustments a person caused, how every displaced particle of air changed what happened next in its immediate vicinity taught her more about the chain of local consequences—about time—than any man-made machine ever could.

  The second was her mana sense. She already knew humans appeared as voids, rejecting the mana around them. Fighting without other senses forced her to focus on how that rejection worked. She observed how the mana field bent and flowed around the human-shaped emptiness, how it compressed just before a movement. She learned more about how mana functioned by watching how it interacted with a person.

  With that information, Kelly reached into her shadow and retrieved her customized ARGi drone to record the next round of torture. She was determined to smack him at least once, and data was king. A solid plan. Hit the old monster, and have a perfect recording of how she finally managed it. Or, more likely, of all the creative ways she failed.

  So time went. Three hours spent fighting in impossible conditions that left her in a constant state of near death, which was a fun new frontier beyond the fake organ failure she induced for her titles and traits. She almost died several times. It became a tedious checklist. She spent five minutes recovering to full health with the help of her Fortress of Vitality title—which felt like chugging liquid sunlight—and a vial of temporary medical nanotech that itched like hell. During that break she noted and compared combat data, studying videos of their fight from the drone and brainstorming methods to use her abilities to catch up to the impossible monster in some way. There had to be a way.

  She fought, then she studied the fight, then fought again. Then she planned and brainstormed, then studied the footage further. It was a productive, if brutally repetitive, cycle.

  Ren joined her in reviewing the video silently. He answered any questions she had about his actions, her actions, and why she succeeded or failed at any given attempt. He in turn asked her questions about her abilities and their conditions, and was insistent and demanding on pushing what she could do. Together, they dissected her magic like a strange, sparking engine. Through this she discovered impactful things. Useful things.

  She had her own personal atomic clock—a clock that measured time perfectly by the changes and frequencies in atoms. Imagine one giant, invisible clock hanging in the center of the universe. On the surface, it appeared that this clock ticked at the exact same rate for everyone, everything, everywhere. A comforting lie. If she focused, she could read it. And she could read the personal time of others, knowing how old they were right down to the second. Ren, for instance, was old. Really, really old.

  And thanks to the synthetic mesh wrapped around her brain's memory and focus centers, that meant if Kelly experienced something just once, she could perfectly predict, anticipate, and react to it. Whether it was a gunshot, a tactical knife to the gut, or a building falling on her head, she could react before she was even consciously aware of it. This would make physical skills and combat with anything below her level range almost trivial. A nice perk, she thought, currently covered in blood and dust on the floor of a crater.

  The power had limits. Situations and people existed where her best reflexes meant nothing. Someone moving faster than thought was a problem. An attack with no warning was a problem. A blow moving at the speed of light was a very big problem.

  But for everything else, her body shifted. Projectiles missed. They smashed into her mimic skin and did nothing useful, selling the beautiful lie that she was bulletproof against elite-killer rounds. She no longer had to read a wrist or a trigger finger, which was handy when they were hidden by spin-barrels or trick triggers. Mixed with her time dilation, it made the immortal scientist look downright impossible to hit from the outside. A neat trick.

  The universe liked its three neat dimensions of space. Time was the messy fourth one.

  Usually, time only marched forward. You couldn't rewind it.

  Except when things started moving stupid fast, right up against light-speed. Then the cosmic rules got drunk and started bending.

  Space and time were linked. Usually, you needed something properly heavy—a planet, a star—to make them curve. That heaviness bent the sheet, and time slowed down near the dent.

  Usually, moving very fast also made time slow down. That was time dilation by speed. The speed of light was a constant, the universe’s one fixed rule. Light was the fastest thing that never changed speed, so time became the flexible one, stretching and squishing, moving slower or faster just to keep light’s speed constant.

  But some things cheated. Some things went faster than light. That was when cause and effect got scrambled. Like the deadtech from Reggie’s future-sight gunman. It used Tachyons. Nasty little things that moved backward in time.

  Like wormholes. A wormhole wouldn’t work unless you had something called negative energy, but really, it was just taking that space-time sheet, folding it, and punching a hole through the middle.

  All of this up close, first hand knowledge—the real, concrete intimate how of it—unclogged several of her titles. They had been bottlenecked, stuck at the second, third, and fourth grades for loops on end. The understanding was the key. The walls shattered. They improved.

  In a single loop!

  “Truly, you are insane, Dr. Voss,” the grey-bearded veteran remarked, a dry snark in his voice. “From the stories of your loops, I had a feeling this sort of kumite-style gauntlet would be most effective for you. But compared to being torn apart by a mass of muscle and metal, or eaten by a winged lizard larger than this room, is this not easier?”

  That appeared true on the surface. In reality, it was anything but. At least the dragon-like creatures—the things people on the internet called actual dragons in New York’s sky—were just dumb beasts. They hadn't taunted her with a knowing grin as one of them ate her that one time in the early days, when she’d foolishly decided to fire at it. And at least Kelly got to have breakfast and print tools whenever the heavy goretank, the Threshold-level destroyer, that walking, thinking machine of flesh and weaponry, had killed her.

  This constant testing—battle and torture in a single loop, coupled with the constant assessment, breakdown, and combat review—was genuinely exhausting. Usually, she would have either won, died, or cheated by now. But it was paying off.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Kelly said, wiping blood from her lip. She agreed that this blend of hardcore, grueling, torturous battle, experimentation, and testing—treating the results like she treated her experiments, by studying them and improving—suited her. It was how she achieved magic, after all. By destroying the universe over and over until something stuck.

  “I’m glad you agree,” Ren Sato the Ghost said, his expression unreadable. “If that’s the case, I can take off the training wheels and really test what you can do.”

  Kelly blinked. “Wait, those were the training wheels?”

  The time to review her battle, to test and experiment with her abilities, increased. In exchange, Ren refused to allow her even a second to regenerate with her titles. His assault was never-ending, and her body accumulated debilitating damage. She couldn’t move her arm properly and her leg was a mess of screaming feedback, forcing Kelly to reconsider her approach mid-stride.

  Kelly interacted with the world in ways nothing else did, except maybe stars. Everything about the energy inside her was… altered, unnatural, and inverted. Her soul generated tachyons that moved faster than light and broke through time, and created mana and negative energy that for the last several millennia, was usually impossible to produce. Most of all, her body treated spacetime like a suggestion.

  She figured out how to use the negative energy to turn her body into something that could punch through time faster than light, and she slowly moved forward in time.

  She felt it—changing the nature of her trait and its effect on her body altered her fundamentally.

  This yielded a spectacular result.

  [Time Attunement Grade-I → Grade-II]

  “Huh?” Kelly muttered. “What?”

  Everything slowed. Sweat and blood fell in the air like molasses. Ren’s movements, previously a blur, now moved like a falling feather. Slowly. And Kelly? She moved normally in this slowed world, though she felt the usual strain on her body, mind, and soul intensify. With the world moving in slow motion, she hopped into his blind spot and swung.

  She was surprised to notice that although everything was slow except her, the old monster’s eyes had still tracked her every movement.

  His nanotech expanded at impossible speed to form a thin shield, and her fists smashed harmlessly against it. A shockwave that shattered the flooring rippled outward in a wave, faster than even enhanced eyes could see.

  The impact separated them.

  Ren approved. “How does your mutation let you move like a speed specialist at the tank level?” he asked, his tone analytical.

  “It’s not superspeed,” Kelly said, bastardizing the physics with a shrug she felt in her bones. “It’s more like… I paid the universe to look the other way for a second.”

  “At the highest Enhancement levels, speed specialists are untouchable,” Ren noted. “I expected something like this. It’s why I was intentionally attacking just faster than you could notice.” The old veteran spoke, and Kelly reacted.

  “So you were sandbagging to see if I’d cheat,” she said, the realization dawning alongside a fresh wave of fatigue. “Awesome. Love being a lab rat for warfare.”

  “You are the lab rat who built the maze, Kelly,” Ren replied, his nanotech retreating. “Now run it again.”